quotations about television
If you look at the economics of these movie studios or these companies, television is really driving the profit. Even at Warner Bros, the television business is much more successful than the film business.
BRETT RATNER
"Television is obviously the future", Screen Daily, May 20, 2017
Blaming TV as an abstract entity is nonsensical. It's our hand on the remote. There's a world out there outside the tube.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
"An interview with Carlos Ruiz Zafon", Book Browse
Look back at television from as recently as the mid-'90s and you'll notice a tedious sameness in the storytelling, an almost factorylike capitulation to norms.
MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
"Television's Best Shows Are Taking Their Cues From Literature", Vulture, May 17, 2017
A TV series is like a conversation -- or, when a show turns awful, a bad relationship.
AUDREY EWELL
"On Loving -- and Panning -- Shows in Television's Renaissance Moment: A Report from the Split Screens Festival", Filmmaker Magazine, June 7, 2017
I don't like reality television, but it pays so much money.
PAMELA ANDERSON
Elle Magazine, March 28, 2014
I believe that the major operating ethic in American society right now, the most universal want and need is to be on TV. I've been on TV. I could be on TV all the time if I wanted to. But most people will never get on TV. It has to be a real breakthrough for them. And trouble is, people will do almost anything to get on it. You know, confess to crimes they haven't committed. You don't exist unless you're on TV. Yeah, it's a validation process.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Atlantic Online, August 26, 1997
Television allows artists the time to tell the story. The opportunity to take a novel and really explore it. Or the chance to really inhabit and tell a period piece or a futuristic piece. With features you don't have that.
PAULA WEINSTEIN
"TV Hijacks Film Fests for High-Profile Bows", Variety, June 12, 2017
The crown of original programming on television is no longer held by your standard or even premium cable channels anymore. It now belongs to the various streaming sites online. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and the like have grown their audience in record numbers recently by creating groundbreaking television shows.
MARIO VALDIVIESO
"Facebook Is Looking to Create Its Own Television Shows", PFSK, June 6, 2017
If television's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who won't shut up.
DOROTHY GAMBRELL
Cat and Girl: Volume I
The role of television is the illusion of company, noise. I call it the fifth wall and the second window: the window of illusion.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
attributed, "I spend my days preparing for life, not for death", The Guardian, October 25, 2007
All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?
NICHOLAS JOHNSON
attributed, A Companion to Television
The luminous screen in the home carries fantastic authority. Viewers everywhere tend to accept it as a window on the world.... It has tended to displace or overwhelm other influences such as newspapers, school, church, grandpa, grandma. It has become the definer and transmitter of society's values.
ERIK BARNOUW
The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate
There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
America
We owe a lot to Thomas Edison -- if it wasn't for him, we'd be watching television by candlelight.
MILTON BERLE
Forbes, 1989
The fact that I am at this event is proof that it is moving forward. That I am on television is proof that it is moving forward.
DONNA LYNN CHAMPLAIN
"Gracie Awards: Rachel Bloom, Debbie Allen on Showing 'Realistic' Women on TV", Hollywood Reporter, June 7, 2017
I migrate to the biggest, freest playground for storytelling and that happened to be limited-series television.
JANE CAMPION
"TV Hijacks Film Fests for High-Profile Bows", Variety, June 12, 2017
Television is a weapon of mass distraction.
LARRY GELBART
attributed, A Companion to Television
People are sheep. TV is the shepherd.
JESS C. SCOTT
Literary Heroin (Gluttony): A Twilight Parody
I've about had it -- the agencies, the winking, the networks, the ratings. Anyone who thinks TV is an art medium is crazy -- it's an advertising medium.
ROBERT ALTMAN
attributed, The Directors: Take Three
Perhaps in some way the worse television is, the better. A lot of people are looking at it, I hear, who had long since given up listening to radio. Perhaps enough of these people will realize after awhile that what they're really looking at is themselves.
RAYMOND CHANDLER
letter to Charles Morton, November 22, 1950